Dick Morris: Joni Ernst Is a Smarter Sarah Palin

Republican political strategist Dick Morris shrugged off the news that former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin might run for office again, telling Newsmax TV on Wednesday that there's a new and improved Palin on the campaign trail these days — and her name is Joni Ernst.

"Ernst is Sarah Palin, but with much more in the way of gray cells," Morris told "MidPoint" host Ed Berliner, calling Iowa's Republican candidate for the Senate "one of the superstars of American politics."

In his weekly "MidPoint" political roundup, Morris praised the state lawmaker, Army reservist, mother and tea party favorite Ernst for a witty, chicken-themed campaign ad skewering her Democratic rival, Bruce Braley — a trial lawyer who once feuded with a neighbor over chickens roaming his property.

Ernst won the primary appealing to voters as an authentic Iowan whose family farm chores included castrating hogs.

She pledged to do likewise in Washington — "cut pork" from the federal budget — in an early campaign ad that endeared her to state Republicans and garnered national attention.

He was less enthusiastic about the political prospects of Palin — the wolf-hunting, frontier-state governor of Alaska who burst onto the national political scene in 2008 as Sen. John McCain's surprise running mate.

Palin, who's made more news outside of politics lately than in it, told Fox Business Network on Tuesday that she would consider seeking office again.

"A possible Palin campaign for anything … would be a seismic occurrence in both press and politics," The Washington Times declared.

"Nah," said Morris, laughing. "I don't think she's going to run and I don't think it would be all that seismic.

"She didn't run when there was an open seat for president," he said. "In '12, she could've run against Obama. But she's not going to run, and this is an effort to get more speaking fees, probably."

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Morris said that other Senate contests — in Arkansas, North Carolina and even New Hampshire — are either in the Republican column already or look increasingly winnable.

He revised an earlier "MidPoint" appraisal of Scott Brown, the transplanted New Hampshire Republican, saying Brown now has "a good shot" at ousting the incumbent Democrat, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen.

He also said President Barack Obama continues to fumble his handling of the Ebola crisis — this time by defending quarantines for U.S. military personnel serving in Africa while not holding civilian medical aid workers to the same precautionary standard.

"This is incredible," said Morris. "Does this president not understand that if he simply let things go in their normal course — let quarantines happen, let people be treated abroad, join nations like Australia in a flight ban — that if there were an Ebola epidemic in the United States nobody could possibly blame him?

"But by intervening in it, by — for some unknowable reason — refusing to ban flights which 30 other countries have done, including 10 African countries, by bringing people here who have Ebola, by not insisting on a quarantine, by saying people that are exposed to it as civilians are on the honor system … for him to do all that means that if there is an Ebola outbreak, it is on his doorstep," said Morris.

Republican political strategist Dick Morris shrugged off the news that former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin might run for office again, telling Newsmax TV on Wednesday that there's a new and improved Palin on the campaign trail these days — and her name is Joni Ernst.